Currently, targeted electronic advertising is implemented through the use of browser cookies—which are a small text files sent to your web browser by a website that you visit. Conventionally, cookies contain information about your visit that you may want the site to remember, like your preferred language and other settings. The web browser stores this data and retries the cookie the next time you visit the site to make the next trip easier and more personalized.
In addition, cookies are used in online advertising for the purpose remembering your interests (i.e., what webpages you've visited) and subsequently showing you related (i.e., targeted) advertisements as you visit other locations throughout the Internet. For example, a user/customer may visit an electronic-commerce (e-commerce) website that sells a product the user is interested in purchasing and the user may browse various web pages on the website, each web page associated with a different product. The e-commerce website may be configured to generate and drop cookies in the user/customer's web browser that identify the web page(s) visited and the content/product associated with those web pages. When the user/customer leaves the e-commerce website and browses other websites on the Internet that have advertising, and more, specifically advertising associated with the previously visited electronic commerce website, the other website may retrieve the cookies and use the information stored therein to provide the user/customer with targeted advertisements. Typically, this means that the user is presented with advertisements for the product(s) that were on the webpages previously visited by the user/customer (i.e., the products that the user/customer showed an interest in).
However, such targeted advertising may be highly ineffective because it does not take into account the fact that in many instances the user/customer has already purchased the product prior to being presented the advertisement, either at another e-commerce website, at a physical retail location (i.e., brick and mortar location) or, in some instances, at the same e-commerce website which generated and dropped the cookies (i.e., the same e-commerce retailer that is providing the user/customer the targeted advertising). In addition, such targeted advertising is limited, in that it is solely based off of previously visited websites and does not take into account any other information or factors that may be relevant to providing more effective targeted advertisement (i.e., advertising that will result in the user/customer responding to the advertising and purchasing the product or service associated with the advertisement).
Therefore, a need exists to develop systems, apparatus, computer program products, methods and the like that provide for serving a website or the website advertiser more robust information about customer without actually identifying the customer. In this regard, the desired systems, apparatus, computer program products, methods and the like should provide for a website or an advertiser advertising on the website to be provided information other than what previous websites or specific webpages within a website a customer has previously visited. Moreover, the desired systems, apparatus, computer program products, methods and the like should provide such relevant robust purchasing-related information to the merchant or advertiser while the customer is concurrently visiting the merchant's website or the site at which the advertiser advertises without divulging the identity of the customer.